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Friday, June 29, 2012

Yay it's Friday and I have a painting to share for Paint Party Friday and well as an entry for the Summer of Color. I started this painting about this time last year and while I mostly liked it, I wasn't happy with her expression- she looked angry where I wanted her to have an air of contemplation about her.

So when I saw that this week's ice cream color challenge was Baseball Nut (a flavor I've never heard of BTW;)) and the colors were raspberry, vanilla and cashews, I thought this would be a perfect time to finish her plus use her as an entry for the Summer of Colors!

I added more shadows to her face and changed her mouth and eyes a little.....

and here she is from before.....

I might do a little more tweaking or maybe I won't....I kind of think she's finished now- what do you think?

Thursday, June 28, 2012

I finished Lisa Wright's round robin rt journal yesterday and it is now on it's way to Maggie for her to add her art to. I am so LOVING being part of these traveling art projects, it's like Christmas each month!

I agonized over finding just the right words to add- I looked at
Goddess and Solstice prayers, June poem, dance poems but nothing seemed
right. Then I remembered words by Madeline L'Engle, one of my favorite
childhood authors and they say everything I wanted to convey here.....

Here's how Lisa's pages ended up looking:

Here it is closed:

and opened to reveal the entire spread:

I've been adding the pages as I get them done to their own page,
if you'd like to see them all together, click HERE
See ya'll tomorrow for Paint Party Friday AND Sumer of Colors!
xx
Stephanie

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

WOW, I LOVED camp last week, it was so much fun to have the house full of littles and all that creativity surging through the house! BUT, I guess I'm starting to get old 'cause it wiped me out! It took most of the weekend for me to recover my energy and here I am again!
Yesterday, I finished the Goddess painting for Lisa Wright's book and I realized that when I finish her pages (I still want to add a quote/prayer) and mail it to Miss Maggie of The Fanciful Magpie, we'll be more than halfway done with our round robin- SO exciting!
So here's what it ended up looking like:

I also took several close ups that I will use for my "Cards of Whimsy" in my Etsy shop. I hope that doesn't seem tacky, I enjoyed doing this painting so much, I want it in my shop too!

And some of you might remember my mandala that I'd planned on accompanying the solstice painting.....it's finished too, but silly me, I made it too big! That's OK though, while I was finishing it (before I realized it wouldn't work for Lisa), I kept thinking how perfect it would have been for Kat who

LOVES mandalas- so, now it's for her book, which is sitting on my desk patiently waiting for attention!

That's all for now, I need to finish Lisa's page, so I can get it in the mail by (or before ;)) Friday and then I need to focus on an entry for the Summer of Color-

Friday, June 22, 2012

Hello again- I finally got a moment to upload more pictures from my art camp. Though some of the projects got too busy to jump in there with the camera, you should get an idea of what we've been up to!

Between recharging my camera and doing so much on Tuesday, I only managed to get a handful of snaps...

this is the only picture I got of this project! The kids painted a sky over oil resist white clouds and then drew themselves in "flying away" on a kite. These turned out great- I really wish I had more pictures to share!

We also played an artsy game of "Simon Says" and painted a night sky with a house, moon and stars into a border saying to "Shoot for the Stars" These were also gorgeous but alas, NO pictures!

We ended the day with practicing mixing colors- I always get a kick of how

magical this seems to the kids- SO much fun!

Then yesterday, we did a more complicated project- the biggest challenge of having such a range of ages (5-9) is figuring out projects that A, they haven't done before and B, aren't too hard for the littles or too "babyish" for the older kids. This one took a LOT of time but came out wonderful!

Funny, out of ALL the supplies I have to offer- this guy goes for the sharpies every time!

And an alternate project:

"Hearts and Hands and Flowers"

For the last project of the day, we did a Mmory Quilt and again,

things got too busy for me to get more than one picture...

This is the water color background with oil pastel "stitching"

They finished these with three illustrations of things they love or mean a lot to them.

So that's all for now. Today's the last day of camp and though I'm tired, it has been FUN! I'll be back soon with pictures of our last projects and to catch up on what YOU guys have been up to. I've missed my Bloggety friends!

I might do a tiny bit more tweaking, but this is pretty much finished.....

And I did more on the dancing ladies....a LOT more:

please pardon the shadow in the upper left corner- it's quite a grey day here,

and tho I took this picture several times, this the best I could do

I'm pretty happy with this except for how "two tone" it is- but on the other hand, I don't want it to be a riot of color. So, here's where I need input; if I added any different colors, what would YOU suggest?

I'd love to hear any ideas!

In the meantime, come join me at Paint Party Friday, it's always a blst filled with so much talent and fun!

Monday, June 11, 2012

Last Summer, many of my favorite blogs participated in The Summer of Color- created and hosted by Kristin of Twinkle Twinkle. There were so many beautiful pieces inspired by this event that I really, really wanted to be part of it. But last Summer was a really bad one for me with lots health problems and such-and I just knew I couldn't add one more thing to my plate. However, this Summer I am ready and set to go! The first challenge was Rainbow Sherbert and I decided to take inspiration from this for a spread for The Sisterhood of Traveling Sketchbooks. We are running really behind and I've decided to try to do my last entries while I'm waiting for the books to come my way. Anyway, rambling aside; here is my entry-

I'll be adding the quote: " If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies." but I need to wait til I get the book because the page sizes vary from from one book to the next.

So, Happy Monday all- do try to get over to Twinkle Twinkle to see what everyone else came up with for the challenge!

Friday, June 8, 2012

It's Friday again, and you know what that means- time to PARTY! With all the other artists at Paint Party Friday! I'm almost done with my mandala- on Wednesday, I got it out to finish and then remembered that duh ! it has to work with the spread it will be "floating" above! So I put the mandala to the side and started working on the two page spread. I'm glad I did too, because they did NOT want to have the same colors! I had used really intense colors for the mandala and the spread wanted to be soft and gentle. And I can make them work together, but the way I work; I have to work on them simultaneously! It's just how I am ;) Anyway, that said, let me show you how it is right now:

Now I love ultramarine blue, but it just doesn't work for me when paired with the spread :

I think, the figures will now become turquoise which will give a good continuity

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Hello all, sorry I've been away for a few days. I still have to do a bit of touch ups on Sanctuary before it's finished, but I thought since I've been showing it SO much lately, I'd give you all something new to look at. Lisa Wright's book arrived on Saturday and since I knew it was on it's way, I'd been brainstorming and decided I wanted to use the upcoming solstice for my inspiration along with the creative network my Inspiration Avenue sisters and I have formed over the years. Thanks to all the gorgeous mandalas Andrea Thompson's has been creating of late; I've also been really wanting to make a mandala.....
I spent Monday sketching and re-sketching until I had what I wanted down on paper and then on Tuesday, all I had time to do was just barely begin adding color before needing to address car troubles, visiting an Aunt in the hospital and doing preps for my new art class...but I did get started and here I am to share!

SO I ended up with a two part design- a fold out spread

(that I'll share
later in the week)

topped with a mandala as a sort of header.

I wanted
this to follow a symmetrical pattern punctuated with bits of asymmetry
here and there...so here it is:

It's pretty small about 6"x6" and me being me took the hard way as usual- instead of painting the swirls AFTER the bodies, I painted around the swirls I'd already drawn and because of this, it took a while to paint the figures....but now that they're done, I should be able to finish pretty quickly and then begin the inside spread to share on Friday....
For now, Happy Wednesday!
xx
Stephanie

Friday, June 1, 2012

That is; just in time for Paint Party Friday! I've been so busy the last couple of weeks that I had very little time to paint and I was worried that if I joined the party,

I wouldn't have time to visit all the other folks there! But this week, I can- so here I am!

Sorry these pictures aren't the greatest- it's quite overcast here today and I couldn't get very good resolution.... that said, I'm a lot closer to being finished with this- I changed the angle of the Clematis and worked on the shading a bit- still need to do a little more in terms of highlights and such- what drew me to paint this was the sweeping line created by the flowers and the ivy and I want to emphasize that a bit more..... I also want to soften the roses a little and do some reworking of the background and then leave it alone to study over the weekend.

That's all for now, I'm heading off to visit the other artists at Paint Party Friday- you should too if you get a chance, always so much beauty to see there!
xx
Stephanie